The Customer is always an Ass

I work as a checkout chick at Safeway. I was working the Express lane (the 8 items or less bit) and admittedly: I was a spineless twat.

So the manager came up to me and told me to refuse to serve the next customer who had more than 8 items. The next customer had about 12 items.

Me: I'm sorry miss, but you've got more than 8 items. You have to go through one of the normal registers.
Her: I no speak English.

And suddenly, I had a moment of clarity. I'll test this theory!

Me: You're an idiot Ma'am.
Her: :O YOU CANT CALL ME THAT! (in a perfect Australian accent)
Me: HA! You CAN speak English! GET to a normal register!

Her face was brilliant. At first it was confusion, then shock, and then anger. She grunted and took her stuff and pissed off.

The manager said he woulda written me up on it, but it was just too damn funny.

Another time, I was serving a psychotic feminazi. I'm talking about the bra-less, arm-full-of-hair, moustache- toting superiority complexing nitwit who makes everybody wish for her swift and painful death. Anyways as soon as I started serving her she gave me crap because I'm a bloke. I just ignored her and zoned out a bit while she proceeded to remind me that a woman would do a better job than me.

Suddenly, the phone next to me rings. I pick it up and it's the service manager.

Feminazi: Pfft, probably your manager telling you that you're fired
Me: Hello?
SM: You do realise you have the right to refuse service to anybody?
Me: Do we now?
SM: Yeah. Oh I do mean anybody by the way. Such as a giant hermaphrodite that insults male employees for being male.
Me: *nods in a business-like manner, trying not to grin*. Okay thanks. I'll keep that in mind.

Now I was good. I didn't immediately tell her to go fuck a dick instantly. I waited untill the next insult. Whether or not I sped up the process by "accidentally" pressing the wrong button is irrelevant!

Feminazi: AGAIN! You FOOL. Cant men do ANYTHING right?
Me: That's it.
*voids transaction
Me: I've voided your transaction and I've been given permission to give you the royal boot. Get the hell outta my store.
Feminazi: You cant do that!
Me: Well...I cant physically throw you out. But that's why I've got security to do such things for me.
Feminazi: You wouldn't dare.
Me:
*calls for security to remove an unruly customer
Feminazi (whilst hurrying out the door): I'll never shop here again!
Me (calling out to it): I'm counting on it.

I love it so much when we can get our own back.

I work in a salon.

One day, some guy came in and asked for a particular stylist he admires the work of. That stylist, lets call her Katie, wasn't in. Our salon offers free education and Katie decided to take advantage of a class so she could give her clients a better service.

I let this guy know that Katie was gone, but that I would be more than happy to give him a haircut that morning. He sits down in my chair, I drape him, and start asking him how he likes his haircut. He liked to be what we call "whitewalled"... Bald about an inch around the edges then faded up to a military crop. It looks fucking stupid, but the client is alway right, yeah?

So I go to start his haircut and he says "It will be 10 dollars, yes?". I inform him, no, our haircuts have never been 10 dollars. He insists that Katie gives him haircuts for 10 dollars. The only way he could get a discount from Katie is if he was a member of Katie's family - and then, the haircut would be 6 dollars. He shakes his head and INSISTS that his haircut is only 10 dollars because it's so short. We make no distinctions in hair length. A man with 1/4 inch of hair pays the same as a lady (or man for that matter) with 2 feet of hair.

At this point, he suddenly stands up, rips off the cape, throws it on my station and storms back over to the waiting area mumbling about how he was going to wait for Katie.

I pulled the other stylist on duty aside and told her that I didn't think the guy was "all there" and that I was going to call the cops if he didn't get a haircut or leave in 10 minutes.

While he was waiting, the other stylist offered to cut his hair as well but he refused saying that Katie was going to come in and that I was a "lying bitch" and I just didn't want to see him get a haircut. He starts ranting and raving and yelling about how I need to get my manager on the phone so he can tell her how I'm a lying bitch. I try to explain to him that I can't call the manager except in a case of an emergency and that I was the assistant manager, and therefore the head of the salon that day.

Lo and behold, about 5 minutes after his little outburst, Katie walks in with ice cream for us all and goes to the back to put it in the freezer. She got out of her class early and thought it would be nice to stop by on her way home. I walk to back to let her know this psycho guy is waiting for her and that I tried to get him to leave and blah blah blah... And I realise that psycho is following me.

I turn and tell him "I'm sorry, nobody but stylists are allowed back here" - to which he replies by grabbing me and shoving me into the wall to storm past.

I regained my balance, walked up front, and called 911. After summoning the police, I locked myself in the bathroom. A few minutes later, someone knocked on the door to tell me the police were out front. I walked out front to talk to them and KATIE HAS THE PSYCHO IN HER CHAIR FOR A HAIRCUT!!

I thanked the police and told them, "It looks like they've taken control of the situation. I'm leaving." I dismissed the officer, and walked in, grabbed my purse, and left. I still had hairclips pinned to my sleeve.

The bastard still has the balls to come in once a month for a haircut. When he's in the salon, I sit in the back room and refuse to come out for anything.

Sometimes, not only is the customer an ass - the coworkers are too!!

This Christmas was a nightmare. I work computer retail at a very nice store in an upscale mall. You know those white headphones you see everywhere? Yeah. Talk about being the ONLY PEOPLE IN STATE THAT HAD THEM. We even had people from Wisconsin and Indiana coming to us to get the damn things. In short, we constantly broke firecodes with the amount of people in the store.

We had this woman who would come in, walk over to the computer closest to the register, and start listening to obscene rap music samples from the online music store. She would crank them up too, trying to drown out the store PA music, the other customers and other computers. I probably wouldn't have had an issue for her if it weren't for all the horrible things being said in the songs (we had LOTS of kiddies in the mall to see Santa), but that's all she'd listen to.

The first few times she did it, we would politely tell her to turn down the music and she'd turn it back up after we walked away. Then we told her that the music was inappropriate (after we had the time and energy to actually listen to what she was playing).

Her defense for the volume was that she couldn't hear the music over the rest of the noise. She claimed that we were discriminating against her and we should tell everyone else to turn down their music as well. We tried to explain that was the store's background music and she demanded we turn it down to be fair.

Her defense for the explicit lyrics, again, was discrimination. She did not seem to understand that the guy across the store listening to Enya did not break store rules, unless they were for questionable taste.

Eventually she'd give up and leave. I assume she worked in the mall somewhere because she was around far too often and would often leave before she had fought with us as much as it seemed she wanted to.

However, one particularly busy day, things escalated. Our credit card system had gone down company wide, so we were having to do things manually, taking about 10x as long per transaction (I kid you not). People were PISSED. Yelling from the back of the line kind of pissed. We were stressed, trying to work quickly and on damage control at the same time. Then SHE walks in.

She walks over to her accustomed computer, turns on some horrifying rap music, turns around, crosses her arms AND STARES ME DOWN. As I was completely tied up at the register, I was unable to do anything. Or so she thought. My manager was going to kick her off of the computer remotely, but he got side tracked. Plus, that wouldn't have the right effect...she would have just gone to the next computer over and done the same thing.

Luckily, one of my co-workers was coming back from lunch at that time. The customers were now angry at us because little Johnny just heard what some pimp was doing to his bitches and how we weren't controlling the situation. My co- worker stepped in for me on the register. I rolled up my sleeves and walked over.

By now we'd dealt with this woman at least 5 times at escalating levels. I had had enough. I left all ass-kissing customer treatment training at the register when I walked over. She had fair warning the first 5 times.

The conversation went something like this (and this is copied from my blog, the day of, so it's fairly accurate)

Me: THIS IS NOT SAM GOODY! If you want to play this kind of music you can walk down there! We have told you time and time again this is inappropriate!
Her: You have to tell everyone else to turn down their music too!
Me: No, I don't. I haven't told everyone else 5 times that this is a problem! You have been warned over and over again, this is ridiculous!
Her: You can't talk to me like this, I'm a paying customer!
Me: Really? What have you bought? What will you EVER buy?
Her: I want to talk to your manager!
Me: Fine! He's already kicked you out 3 times! I'm sure he'd love to do it again!
Her: You better watch yourself!
Me: You better watch for mall security in about 30 seconds, because if you aren't out of here by then, I'm calling them.

She turned and stalked out. Customers applauded me. My co-workers cheered. It was glorious. I was shaking so bad I couldn't type for about 10 minutes.

I have never talked to a customer like that before that, and never have since. In fact, I'm the biggest kiss-ass-take- all-the-abuse type of person. In retrospect, I'm ashamed with the way I dealt with the situation and talked to her. I could have been fired ten times over for what I did. But something snapped in me that day. Perhaps because it was obvious she came there to fight me...and I came out the alpha female. And it felt so good.

I've never seen her since. And even though management found out, I was never reprimanded in any way.

I used to work cashier at a supermarket. One day a typical overburdened mom with $300 worth of groceries and a cranky kid in the cart comes on my line, nothing out of the ordinary. The mom's trying to put her stuff on the belt, the kid wriggling in his seat, trying to get to the candy shelf, despite his mom repeatedly yelling at him not to. I'm just doing my job, scanning the groceries, ignoring the little monster. He manages to grab a pack of Skittles off the shelf and toss it on the belt, his mom sees, grabs them, and puts them back on the shelf, telling him no candy. He grabs it again, she tries to grab it from him, and the bag rips open during the tug of war between them.

He takes a handful of Skittles, throws them into his mom's face, and shouts "TASTE THE RAINBOW, MOMMY!"

I don't think he got any candy for a long time after that.

Just the other day I had a woman come in and attempt to complete "the trifecta" of bullshit returns. She had a cell phone charger that:

1) Was purchased at another store (in Illinois, she was on a roadtrip. I'm in Michigan.)
2) Lacked the receipt or box (as if it would have mattered, see 1)
3) Was admittedly over a year and a half old.

I explained to her the difference between a privately-owned retail store and a Sprint corporate store, and mentioned that while a corporate store may be able to accept inter-state returns, they would most likely not do it without a receipt or box. Furthermore, there is no warranty expressed or implied on a cell phone charger, as well as almost every product you purchase at any store, ever, besides something you pay more for or is advertised. If it's defective out of the box, you may get a kind clerk to give you a new one, but really unless it's stated somewhere that that's policy, they're under no obligation to do so. Either way, this is not the case on multiple levels.

After listening to all this, she just says "I got this at a Sprint store, it doesn't work anymore, you're a Sprint store, gimme a new one."

When I tell her again this is an impossibilty, she leans way over the counter to show some cleavage and bats her eyes, giving me the "awww, pleeeease? Come on." As if by giving her a free charger she will magically be inspired to leap over the counter and do biblically unspeakable things to me. This happened all the time at gas stations with underage wenches trying to buy beer/cigarettes and I have as little tolerance for it then as I did now. I repeat our store policy and how there is nothing I can do to help her.

"How about I just take one? No one will miss it, I'm just going to take one. How about that? You're not gonna stop me or anything" she says, smugly, moving to slip a charger into her purse.

"WRX 343" I say, pointing out the store's front window to her parked car (and its front-mounted license plate.)

"Oh, FUCK YOU!" she shouts, throwing the charger onto the floor and storming out. She gives me the finger through the window before peeling out and almost wrecking herself on the back of a parked UPS truck.

Behold, the majesty of retail.

I actually work for a cell phone insurance company. I'm not going to give it's name, or any of it's clients, but I can say Verizon's not one of them. And that's a shame because if they have more customer service reps like your girlfriend, I'd be SO happy to work with them. Our clients' reps could learn a thing or two from them. They just like to send us anyone with a non-working phone to us expecting us to cover it, even if they know damn good and well we're not going to cover it.

We've had store reps for our clients actually coach customers into how to get a phone from us when they do something stupid like intentionally break their's, or if it's something we don't cover like malfunctioning phones (those actually do have to be covered through the manufacterer). Of course when this happens and well call them on it, not only is the store rep reported since it's a breach of contract, but the customer also ends up with a fraud alert on his/her account.

Another thing customer that actually DO call us don't seem to realize is that we keep notes on each time they call, even if it's just to get a claim number. So when someone calls in, gets rejected because it's something we don't cover, and tries to call back to change their story... we'll know.

Last time this happened to me, I decided to fuck with the guy. He was originally rejected because he got angry and threw his phone away after his dog chewed on it, which is voluntary seperation. If it was just the dog chewing on it, we would have covered it. So he calls back and gets me. While I'm verifying his information, I read over his notes and saw when he called us earlier. Instead of stating "I see you called us earlier", I pretended I didn't see anything and asked him what happened to his phone. This time "he lost it while out walking." I asked him if he filed a police report (something we require for any lost phone), he even blatantly made up the story "yeah, yeah, uh, I tried to but the police officer, he looked at me like I wuz crazy r' somethin'!"

I ended it "Okay sir, well I'm seeing where you called us less than an hour ago and said that you threw your phone away after your dog chewed on it. Because of that, we have to go by your original story and cannot accept your loss." He was too flabbergasted and embarassed to even argue, just said "kay thanks have good evening" and hung up.

I was once working as a CSM (front end manager) at Wal-Mart when a cashier told me a lady in line had a dog. Wal-Mart has a strict policy about non-service animals in the store, so I informed her of this. She got bitchy, telling me that she couldn't just leave her dog out in the car, and that it was small and wasn't hurting anyone. I restated the policy, and she left. Well, a couple weeks later she was back in, along with her dog. Unfortunately, I wasn't informed until she had already left, but apparently when the cashier told her the no-animal policy, the lady started yelling at her and bitching that her dog goes where she goes, blah blah. The cashier then responded that the policy is in place due to some people having allergies, herself being one of them. The lady then shouted something to the effect of, "Well, I hope you have a heart attack and die, you little bitch!" before storming out. I can't wait for her to come back in with her dog again, so I can talk to the store manager about getting her banned.

I used to work at Suncoast Motion Picture Company (The video store too good to call itself a video store!) and I don't know that I went an entire week without having some mind numbing conversation with the customers.

One of my personal favorites was this guy who came in with a plastic grocery bag containing 18 copies of Jaws.

"I'd like to return these please."

"Um...18 copies of...okay well do you have a receipt?"

"No I don't they were gifts!"

At this point I start inspecting the video boxes noticing that not only do they not have any price tags on them but they don't have any evidence of ever having had a price tag on them. (I don't know if you have ever tried to remove those stickers from the plastic wrap, but it always leaves a mark somewhere.) That's when I noticed the printing quality on the boxes was pretty sub par, certainly not of the same quality that the companies use.

So I hand the stack back to him and tell him I can't give him a refund without a receipt.

"What you you mean? I'm a customer! We're always right!"

"SIR! I'm sorry, but you have to see how suspicious this looks there's no price tags on these, there's no evidence that there has ever been a price tag, you have no receipt... I can't give you anything I'm sorry."

"I told you they were gifts!"

"18 people bought you a VHS copy of Jaws? I'm sorry that just doesn't seem likely to me if I had even a slightest shed of proof that these came from one of our stores I'd be willing to give you a trade in but..."

"I don't want a trade in I want my money back."

"I thought you said they were gifts..."

"You calling me a liar?"

"Your words sir...not mine."

So at that he storms off and tells me he's going to go to Sam Goody where they'll give him decent customer service.

With that I got on the phone, called the Sam Goody and warned him about the guy. Five minutes later he came storming in again.

"What did you tell them?!"

"I told them that you were trying to scam the company by returning bootleg videos for cash."

He then turned around and ran out of the mall.

I spent the next 30 minutes calling every Media Play, Sam Goody and Suncoast in my state to watch out for the guy.